Jaguar Land Rover Renaming Itself JLR — and Abandoning the Land Rover Badge

Farewell Jaguar Land Rover. The Indian-owned British auto company will pare it corporate badge back to JLR, the name that many inside and outside the company have long preferred. But as part of a corporate restructuring, the familiar Land Rover marque will soon disappear entirely.

The new structure divides JLR into what Gerry McGovern, the company’s chief creative officer, is calling a “House of Brands.” There will four, in all, with each focused on a particular product lines, each meant to “amplify the uniqueness of our characterful British marques,” McGovern said in a statement released Thursday. Those brands are:

• Jaguar;
• Defender;
• Discovery; and
• Range Rover.

Three pillars

The move isn’t without a sense of precedent. In recent years, the Land Rover side of the company had been realigned to focus on what officials described as three “pillars.”

The Discovery brand was meant to target family buyers and offered some of Land Rover’s most affordable products.

The Defender side was essentially reborn just two years ago with its first all-new products in five years. It takes aim at the company’s roots with its go-anywhere capabilities

Range Rover has long served as the most exclusive product line-up in the family. And the rebadging helps simplify a sometimes-awkward nomenclature that saw JLR market products like the Land Rover Range Rover SV Autobiography.

Land Rover could survive

Whether the Land Rover name will vanish entirely is unclear. According to Automotive News Europe, it will still be used as a “trust mark” badge on at least some of the future JLR SUVs.

“Land Rover will remain. It is strong, well known, and we will use that collective strength to give our brands authenticity and purpose,” a spokesperson told the trade publication.

But exactly how JLR will reconcile that with the decision to make Jaguar, Defender, Discovery and Range Rover distinct brands has yet to be fully revealed.

Going electric

The badging realignment comes a day after the British-based automaker laid out its long-awaited electrification plans. All told, it will invest 15 billion British pounds, or $18.7 billion based on current exchange rates, during the next five years.

It has already rolled out an assortment of hybrids but the next stage is to launch the first all-electric models. This week’s announcement focused primarily on Jaguar which will bring out a four-door, battery-powered GT model said to have a range of 700 kilometers, or about 430 miles, per charge. (That will be based on the global WLTP standards, rather than the stricter U.S. EPA testing mandate.) Billed as the most powerful model the British marque has ever sold, it is expected to carry a price tag of nearly $125,000.

Jaguar is now targeting a 2025 date for going 100% electric. That is part of the “unfinished business” of recreating the brand that needs to be completed, Adrian Mardell, who was appointed Jaguar’s interim CEO last autumn, said during a presentation earlier this week.

The various brands being spun off by Land Rover are also planned to include all-electric models. All four JLR brands will utilize a common skateboard-like platform, the Electric Modular Architecture.

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• Source: https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2023/04/jaguar-land-rover-renaming-itself-jlr-and-abandoning-the-land-rover-badge/